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Pipeline drilling set to resume

Mariner East 2 work had been delayed at two local sites

Horizontal directional drilling for construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline can resume at two local sites, where work was halted last week by court order.

State Environmental Hearing Board Judge Bernard A. Labuskes Jr. ordered Thursday that drilling can again begin at 16 of 17 requested locations, including near Dry Run Road in Blair County and the western portion of Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County.

All drilling associated with Mariner East 2 construction was halted July 25, when another order from Labuskes stopped drilling at 55 locations across the state in the days leading to a hearing scheduled so that the Clean Air Council, Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Mountain Watershed Association can challenge pipeline construction permits issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

That hearing before the Environmental Hearing Board originally scheduled for Monday in Harrisburg has been pushed to Wednesday, a court official said.

Sunoco Pipeline LP — a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners — is working to build a 300-plus-mile pipeline to transport natural gas liquids from beyond Pennsylvania’s western border to a processing facility in Delaware County’s Marcus Hook area. Along the way, it will pass through Blair, Cambria and Huntingdon counties.

Pipeline construction requires horizontal drilling in some areas, with equipment using a combination of water and bentonite clay under pressure as a lubricant.

Typically, the material flows out through a borehole, but at times fractures in rocks and other geological variations allow the liquid to leak elsewhere.

The state Department of Environmental Protection released project oversight information, which showed dozens of drilling lubricant leaks — some impacting water quality of private wells.

Labuskes’ imposed hiatus came with a stipulation that the halt could be amended if pipeline builders could prove the period of inactivity would “cause equipment damage, a safety issue or more environmental harm than good.”

A motion submitted — and later clarified — by Sunoco officials in late July aimed to prove those hardships, explaining “where HDD is suspended, the risk of collapse of a drilled hole … is greater than at the pilot stage because the diameter of the hole is as much as four times as large.”

The motion asked that drilling be allowed at 17 of the 55 halted locations.

Despite counter arguments from pipeline opponents that Sunoco’s claims lacked “critical information as to risk and site-specific environmental conditions,” Labuskes allowed work to resume at all but one of the 17 proposed locations — near a creek in Lebanon County.

In both Huntingdon and Blair counties, the pipeline has faced opposition from protesters, who claim it is a risk to the environment, while others have supported the pipeline for its economic benefits.

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